[Twisell]

Ultimately this is totally nonsensical because you'd have to ban an infinite number of number because some clever boy around will definitively distribute the number preceding the illegal one and some unrelated folk can point out that you just have to +1 to get the illegal one. Basically none of the two would have done anything illegal until a ruling. rince, repeat. This is utter non-sense.

[peteretep]

> This is utter non-sense

All current computer media can be represented as an integer. You're suggesting that no media is illegal?

[gambiting]

It shouldn't be illegal. Possession of information - be it a book, a video, a picture, or text, should never be illegal in itself. Production and distribution of certain kinds should be absolutely illegal, but they already are, I don't think there's any discussion here.

[peteretep]

> Possession of information [...] should never be illegal in itself.

It certainly makes for an interesting discussion, however, your view is fringe here -- the laws of virtually every free democracy on the planet encapsulate the idea of some information being illegal.

HOWEVER: the gp point wasn't coming at it from your perspective there. They were saying (as I understood it) the fact that integers are "just numbers" meant that banning them was nonsensical. By extension, the illegality of distributing them would also be nonsensical.

[letsgetphysITal]

> the laws of virtually every free democracy on the planet encapsulate the idea of some information being illegal.

Illegal to disseminate, not to own. There should be no punishment for being able to access or possessing information; Liability should squarely sit with the publisher, intentional or otherwise.

[pbhjpbhj]

Most places have indecency laws which cover things like video of murders and extreme pornography; privacy laws that make acquisition and retention of data/imagery illegal; etc..

[letsgetphysITal]

We (you) are conflating issues. Creating, distributing, profiting from, and possessing are all separate issues. Possession of information of any kind should not be illegal, as information is in and of itself not harmful; It's how you use it which should confer liability. If I download instructions on making a nuke, for example, that shouldn't be illegal. It should be illegal to make a nuke, to use a nuke, and to distribute them onward, but not to own them.

[V-2]

This is about distribution. The whole concept of media is inherently related to distribution (of information). It's in the very etymology of the word.

[gambiting]

Absolutely, but to use books as the example here - should we ever send people to jail for owning a book? Like, just sitting in their home library - should you ever go to jail for one? If yes, why yes? If no, what if the book is Mein Kampf? What if it contains graphic descriptions of child rape? What if it contains nuclear codes for US army stockpile? What if it describes how to make bombs and conduct terrorist attacks?

Or maybe....we should look at who is distributing material that we have a problem with, and target it there? As a society we should never be putting people in jail for just owning a certain piece of information, would you not agree?

[klmr]

> If no, what if the book is Mein Kampf?

Incidentally there isn’t a single country (as far as I could find) where owning Mein Kampf is or was illegal. There’s a common misconception that its possession is or was illegal in Germany. However, this was never the case. Until 2016 the state of Bavaria owned the exclusive copyright and prohibited its publication. But that’s it.

[gambiting]

That's kind of my point - Owning it is not a crime. If police finds a copy in your house, you're not automatically going to jail just because you have it. At the same time, its publication and sale is either prohibited because of copyright issues or under laws which prevent sale of Nazi paraphernalia.

[andrepd]

If someone has videos of child rape on their hard drive, do you think they should be arrested and charged with a crime?

[gambiting]

Nope, unless they participated in creation of such video. If they just downloaded it off the internet, then no - maybe they should be sent for mandatory psychiatric evaluation, but to prison? No.

Let me put it this way - you can go on google right now, type in "two teenagers kill man with screwdriver", and very quickly(on dailymotion) find an EXTREMELY graphic video of two guys killing a person with a screwdriver, picking out his eyeball and playing with it, while he's still alive etc etc. It's absolutely sickening and it shows a horrendous crime being committed. Yet watching and/or downloading such a video is not a crime in itself. If police ever found such a video on your drive they would probably go "wtf dude" but nothing would happen to you. How is that different from the video you described? Because someone might wank to it? What if someone gets off on the one I described? Is it a crime before or after you get aroused?

Instead, like I said - simply having a video/picture/text/drawing of literally anything shouldn't be a crime in itself.

[SiempreViernes]

I don't see the problem with banning or otherwise regulating certain representations if that is a useful tool against the production you are trying to stop.

This sort of "everything is allowed" arguments just seems like a way to avoid having to think carefully about what restrictions are reasonable, and what constitutes responsible use of information. Simply lazy irresponsibility.

[GyYZTfWBfQw]

Except it's not "everything is allowed", and the "ban and regulate everything" mentality seems to be more harmful, useless, waste of time and money in reality.

Regarding responsibility: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16933814

[psyc]

I have commented before about A/B testing the law to achieve statistical outcomes, and I absolutely do see a problem with it. It tosses principles and liberties out the window. Legislating things that are correlated with the thing you want to avoid is a utilitarian bridge too far for me.

[TeMPOraL]

So you'll be fine with DUI? After all, it's not the alcohol we're trying to avoid - it's the accidents, which are correlated with alcohol (for obvious reasons).

Truth is, often correlations are the only things we can go after to fight the things we don't want.

[psyc]

I think that reaching for legislation as the tool to minmax any desirable societal metric is a bad doctrine. That does not mean I am against every possible instance of it. DUI is very immediate. It's like putting one round in the chamber and pointing it at a public space. But, for example, I am opposed to restricting speech and free association as a less expensive proxy for stopping various things.

[dingo_bat]

Should possession of anything be illegal?

[ben_w]

Sadly, being silly doesn’t make a law unenforceable (for example, every Witchcraft Act).

There is a lot of content out there which is illegal to possess, not just DMCA circumvention, and thanks to the wonderful power of mathematics that content can always be expressed as a number.

Extending your analogy, you could have a random bit sequence, XOR it with the content and distribute only the random sequence and the XORed sequence, making it a nonce-sense.

[logfromblammo]

Or you could use a public and well-defined bit sequence, such as binary digits of pi, and distribute the XORed sequence.

You might even decline to mention which well-defined bit sequence you used, and just leave it as an exercise for the reader to try XORing with pi, e, phi, sqrt(2), etcetera on their own.

[pbhjpbhj]

Being a contributor or accessory to crime is also ordinarily punishable and accounts for this.

[gowld]

The map is not the territory. The mathematical model for reality is not reality.